#33 X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

#33 X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Ian McKellen, Peter Dinklage and every other actor whose played a mutant in the last seven films, except for the original Toad, Sabretooth (both) and all the crappy mutants from the first awful Wolverine movie.

Directed by Bryan Singer and 131 minutes long.

Good films are much harder to review than bad ones.

In the future what's left of mutant-kind stands on the edge of extinction thanks to war with shape-shifting Sentinels - robot constructs programmed to hunt down and kill mutants. In a desperate attempt to win the war, Prof Xavier and best brah, Magneto decide to send, everyone's favourite mutant, Wolverine back in time to 1973 to prevent Mystique from triggering a series of events that will ignite the war in the first place; but first he's got to convince a skeptical Xavier he's from the future and break the Master of Magnetism out of a federal jail and still get home in time for his tea! So, in a nutshell it's Terminator meets Back to the Future meets the Enid Bylton's Secret Seven.

What follows is a rollicking romp with plenty of action, superb effects, terrific performances and excellent special effects, all of which is only marginally let down by a sense of poe-faced seriousness that seeps into the proceedings where perhaps a whiff more humour could have worked wonders.

There's a fantastic sequence where new mutant, Quicksilver frankly powns the entire film and in fact it could quite easily be called the film's stand out sequence, he's brings a much needed lightness to the film. In fact, such a good character is he that you find yourself wishing the film just followed him, Wolverine and Hank around on a road trip.

Luckily we still have Jennifer Lawrence to keep us interested in the rest of the film and yet again she is just fantastic. Every film she's in benefits from her performance and she easily takes centre-stage in this one.

Actually, an aside. At several times during this film and the last X-Men film: First Class, certain characters act as if they're replused by the sight of the blue-skinned Mystique, I for one want to state here and now that I find the idea of a blue-skinned, insanely flexible and fantastic beautiful mutant anything but repulsive! And she can wrap those awesome legs around my face any time she likes.

Once again, Singer creates a great super-hero movie and can finally be forgiven for the desperately dull miss-fire, Superman Returns. With a complicated plot and story that zips back and forth through time and a football teams' worth of characters to keep juggling between, including old and young versions of the same, X-Men Days of Future Past isn't a film you can snooze through, even if you could block out the sound effects, it's also not a super hero film for kids younger than 10 who are going to get bored and confused by this.

Great stuff! But I do suggest you rewatch X-Men 1 & 2 and First Class before you start. You can safety ignore Last Stand and the first Wolverine film. NO one should have to suffer those again.

An entirely satisfactory experience marred only by a certain seriousness and the need for certain characters to revert to type and ignore all their spy training by grandstanding and frankly acting the goat.

8/10

SPOILER ALERT - THIS NEXT BIT, IT'S ABOUT MAGNETO AND THE END OF THE FILM, PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN THE FILM.

Finally, answer me this, if you can.

Why does Magneto insist on talking to the iron-laced sentinals as they are, hmm sentient, despite the fact he's controlling them like puppets? Also, the amount of mental control it must take to do the following at the same time is truly extraordinary.

1. Fly.
2. Hold thousand of tons worth of sports stadium aloft.
3. Remote control six 30ft tall Sentinals.
4. Target and control their complicated weapon systems.
5. Have them act as his eyes and ears as patrol guards.
6. Have an involved conversation about ethics with several people at the same time.
7. Tap dance and keep spinning a row of plates.
8. Keep aloft and perfectly aim over a dozen revolvers at a variety of targets without sighting down their barrels.

And yet people go on about the fact that just because Prof. X can throw his voice he has the world's most powerful mind. I'd much rather be magneto than Prof X.